Shortwave Radio Oddity Roundup 

Signalis fans will hear this and say “ayo this a bop, turn that shit up”

Whenever you think you have it rough, just remember- somewhere, somebody's job is to listen to the Chinese robot all day.

Something about this REALLY creeps me out.

High pitch polytone is pretty banging tbh

the guy who made "high-pitched polytone" was tired of waiting on his sound cloud

UPDATES: “High-Pitched Polytone” and “Backwards Radio Station” are now inactive. Also, “drums and trumpets” is was still around until 2010, but on a private radio wave channel broadcast from MoD Aird Uig, Scotland, UK from 1993. The station it’s self is actually Scottish. I went to the abandoned site at Aird Uig (On the Outer Hebrides). It is Abestos contaminated, but one building the locals want to convert to a museum with a history exhibit, restaurant and whale listening post. Hope you found this useful.

Part 1: Extinct stations Three note oddity (0:34) Drums and trumpet (1:13) 8 note rising scale (2:07) Gongs and Chimes (3:07) Faders (3:55) Part 2 : Rare stations Backwards Music Station (4:45) The Crackle (5:30) Yosemite Sam (6:06) The Workshop (6:26) 3 day mystery (7:06) Wop wop (7:45) Part 3: Active/Regular stations High pitch Polytone (8:22) Grasshopper (9:38) Pip (10:16) Squeeky Wheel (10:59) The Buzzer (11:48) Slot Machine (12:32) The Chinese Robot (13:03)

I'm an experimental musician who's been doing industrial music and noise music since the 80's and I've found that some of the best strange sounds to record and mess with come from shortwave radio. It's an amazing resource for a musician to get interesting stuff to play with. You can always find strange sounds, number stations, conversations that are just.. out of tune.. All fantastic to toss into an audio editor and work into a tune somehow.

i love how the most upbeat ones are usually the creepiest. "Drums and Trumpets" for example. it sounds triumphant, but deeply sinister all at the same time.

Turns out High-Pitch Polytone isn't actually a numbers station, it's just some guy playing on his Commodore 64.

As somebody that had SW on his boombox in the 80s I loved listening to these creepy-ass stations and falling asleep to them. Screw aliens & ghosts - this stuff is far creepier! All of these were created for a reason

I remember coming across a particularly chilling Chinese broadcast once. It would play segments of Chinese pop music from 90's/2000's in various warped states, sort of like a sound collage. And it repeated nonstop. But then on occasion, there would be an interruption. I only ever heard two kinds. One is a quote from the Tao Te Ching being spoken in what sounded like Cantonese by an elderly woman. This would repeat around 6 times before the music would come back. The only other interruption, which I had only heard once and scared the shit out of me, was what sounded like a small child sobbing and an angry man shouting numbers in Mandarin. A sharp tone would hold out for a while, then a quote from the Buddha would be recited in what I think was Tibetan, but might have been Nuosu, I'm not exactly sure, but then weird sound collage would play again.

It's creepy because there's a reason these were broadcast on shortwave. Shortwave isn't nearly as popular, can be picked up all around the world, and there's plenty of frequencies to choose from.

This is one of my all-time favorite videos on the entire internet. There's something uniquely fascinating about this kind of stuff that has kept me coming to this exact video for years and years.

Used to stay up all night listening to STASI numbers stations as a kid. Went to the STASI museum in Berlin. If anyone is interested,ask the museum guards and they have a tone of info on East German numbers stations, including a photo of the woman who actually is used for the voice. Shit isn’t so creepy when you actually see the room it was all recorded in and the people who used it.

These are so creepy but satisfying

Little bit of engineering info on XPH/Polytone (don't know if this is known already): 1. The slow tones at the beginning are sent at a rate of one tone per second and repeat very slowly - probably there as a station ID or to help operatives tune their receiving equipment. 2. The repetitive high pitched tones (which I swear sound like Fur Elise) are alternating between two frequencies at a rate of 8 tones per second. They alternate 10 times. This is probably to get the receiver synchronized with the tone timings. 3. After that, the lowest tone (which I guess is a sort of "marker tone") plays 10 times in a row, also 8 per second. Probably more time synchronization. 4. The station then plays groups of 5 tones with that same "marker tone" in between each group. The tones are still sent at a rate of 8 per second. I saw about 9 different tones (not including the marker tone) used in the groups, with a frequency separation of 50 Hz. No tone ever repeats twice (except in step #3). 5. The second transmission (the higher pitched one) follows the same scheme, but this time the marker tone is the highest. My guess is there was no pitch difference, but rather the folks who made the recordings had their radios set to different SSB modes. So, we can conclude: a) Whoever designed the XPH transmitter REALLY likes multiples of 5 and 10. b) This is pretty clearly some kind of slow MFSK and not actually intended to be heard as audio. c) The system transmits 3 bits per tone, 15 bits per group, at a rate of 3/4 groups per second, or about 11.25 bits per second. (And you thought *your* WiFi was slow...)

‘Eight note rising’ is Boards of Canada.

east Germany, Russia, USA: numbers, noises, film lines France: *quack* *quack* *quack* *quack* *sounds of ducks making out*

13:03 will wood reference 😳

The backwards music station sounds like someone trying to play the recorder in the middle of an orchestra that forgot to tune their instruments.

these terrify me. I don't know why

I like this Autechre album.

"Wop Wop" I guess France isn't too fond of Italians

“FOR THE LAST TIME MASON, WHERE. IS. THE NUMBER STATION!!”

I Don't know if High Pitch Polytone is terrifying or dope af. It sounds like something you would hear either in a club or in Silent Hills PT on the radio.

7:08 sounds like something death grips would sample

I think I just watched the most interesting video I ever watched on youtube. Thank you so much for this. SW seems to be an incredible world. I just got a SW receiver module for my modular synth and realise the SW world is a deep and possibly dark place of great interest. Great video too. Love the font you used.

Why does "The Gongs" sound like the gates of hell being opened?

I think my brother and I heard some of these oddities while playing around with our grandfather's Hammerlund short wave radio in the basement of his house. We turned the knobs and paused on any signal we came across, and it seems to me we heard some of this stuff back in the 1970s.

Many spies where just accidentally activated, well done.

some poor government worker in 2002: let's call this one "wop wop" (everyone else in the room nods solemnly)

8:42 FINAL BOSS REACHED

I know what the 3 Note Oddity means. It means that the call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again.

This is incredibly interesting, thanks for the video.

13:02 The Chinese Robot With Five Names

If you wonder why some of these sound so "creepy", it's because they were on tape recordings, and as the tape keeps playing over the years it starts to corrupt, making the sounds off tone and "eerie"

High-Pitch-Polytone Was LIT

That "High-Pitch Polytone" sounds like a Cannibal Corpse solo.

The most interesting station calls came from the Eastern block from the 50's to 70's... Even the 'normal' ones are highly interesting ; got me a whole disk full of 'm...I remember as a kid to be glued to the station dial....Those old tube radios made it even more mysterious....

the high pitched polytones sounds like a really low tech midi of Master of Puppets

the gongs was probably the most creepy of the bunch

I'm addicted to this stuff

It breaks my heart knowing that number stations will never be as creative as this. Late 80s to early 2000s was the hayday of number stations.

I picture some mild mannered school teacher perhaps, coming home from a hard day of trying to teach his young adolescent school students American history.. Off comes the coat and hat, curtains drawn. Bottom drawer in a secret compartment out comes the trusty short wave and decoder book awaiting instructions from mother Russia.. Oh the good old days of espionage and counter intelligence. Awesome video thanks for the kicks - I love short-wave radio. Been a fond friend over the years fighting insomnia...

wop wop will be the next hot edm single

Cool stuff. I thought of a Russian gulag for the workshop. The high pitch polytone reminded me of some 1980s Nintendo video games. Maybe the slot machine is some Japanese Admiral playing pachinko while he's at sea. ☺

Probably the best youtube video ever IMO, well done, do video like that about ham radio or new version of this one. thanks 73

as a bulgarian im happy to see our country finally involved in analog horror

This is gold. Reminds me of being a kid playing with the old transistor radio in the dark at night with my brother...terrified that we were communicating with the dead. Simple times.

8:24 I'm sure Someone playing Crazybus

(repeated from another video) 0:34 babe wake up, remember that promise?

Why does all the creepy stuff come from Russia...

I have to come back and watch this video from time to time because it's so cool. Thanks for making it!

I remember hearing these as a kid in the early 90's with my Christmas shortwave radio. Thanks for brining back memories. Are there still weird transmissions out there?

High-Pitch Polytone reminds me of the music from Great Bay Temple in Majora's Mask.

I remember on occasion when I was off sick from school or late at night I used to listen to the radio and sometimes scanning the short wave band and coming across these calling signals. This was back at the height of the cold war and they always seemed (and still do) disturbing, mysterious and otherworldly.

No Lincolnshire Poacher :(

8:45 Robert Fripp gains access

The Gongs gave me nightmares for a long time. now that i'm watching it again i'm probably gonna stay up again, lol

actually, it makes me kinda sad to think that all of this is mostly in the past now. A millisecond encrypted data burst on a cell phone now does what these transmission used to do. I used to enjoy hunting these oddities on my ham radios.

I can't watch this with sound my dog keeps going nuts

it's so fascinating that will wood used this random ass thing in his song. shoutout to the person who pointed this out first

high pitch polytone goes kind of hard

I know the "Wop Wop" station! It's on my channel as what I believed to be a numbers station, and a friendly RU-vidr identified it as a CODAR station. Now I have a name too. I also recorded the Buzzer, which I might do again sometime in its own video.

the thing that creeps me out is all these stations probably has meanings

the fact that these existed and were broadcasted at some point just.....creeps me out I don't know what to say about it its just....soldiers were tuning into these and understood them in some way

8:25 Russia did dubstep before anyone else

Logic says that the developers at Rose Engine probably used this video as a reference when they selected the Three Note Oddity for Signalis. Probably heard that one and instantly knew they wanted it. And yet it was INCREDIBLY creepy for me to open this video and have the Three Note Oddity be the VERY FIRST one. I expected it would show up, like, halfway through.

I have listened to these types of stations in the past and have also questioned their utility. The "three note oddity" is really a mystery, unless it was designed to somehow be a beacon to perhaps indicate good propagation on some frequency.

Most of these are data transmissions, for atmosphere reseach or just placeholders for military stations. Very interresting!

7:45 Photon lasers, fire!

3:21 big nope to this one

"Crackle" almost sounds like Hellschreiber teletext

High pitch Polytone sounds like an old video game.

I’ve been a shortwave listener now since 2017, there’s always something about numbers stations and oddity signals in general that both fascinates me to no end and also fills me with unease and dread even after like 6 years of trawling the bands.

0:34 Signalis

I'm not sure which one, but one of the broadcast activated my cat. She's been at the edge of my bed for some time listening and staring at my phone. I'm thinking she's a sleeper agent now.

Chills brought me here! 😱❤️

Is this the apx twin station

I think the music and tones in part one were used to help the operatives tune in, similar to the way that shortwave broadcasters used to use interval signals.

Honestly your one of my favourite youtubers.

3:07 this East German thing is……oddly terrifying

The Workshop, I discovered this on Medium Wave (UK) sometime around 1990. A local radio station was changing frequency, so I was scanning through to hear the test transmission purely out of interest. But on the way, I hit upon a signal which sounded silent at first. But when I turned up the volume, there were workshop noises identical to the ones in this video. It broadcast constantly, it intrigued me. Now I know of numbers stations, it only poses more questions than it provides answers. It's interesting to see that first reported discoveries date back to the late 90's, because I can 100% assert that I heard it some time in the late 80's to early 90's.

I'm pretty scared of number stations right now.

The first one isn't hUngarian but German, East German more specifically. The second one is Yugoslavian and not Bulgaria.

the Morse code at the end says "THANK YOU FOR WATCHING"

Love this video. Informative and has long sound clips for each one.

00:01 was used as the whale tracker transponder frequency in The Voyage Home - Star Trek IV

i think some of these are used in navagation , like markers for cold war bomber crews. triangulating positions

Absolutely brilliant! Thanks for sharing and uploading! 😊👍😊

5:18 omg that is so unsettling, that noise!!

0:45 Major 7's are great indeed.

9:22 oH MY GOD THIS SOUNDS AMAZING

What a great trip down memory lane. Hearing 'The Gong Station' brings back memories, and I heard a couple extinct ones I'd never heard. "The Workshop" sounds like classic Russian random noise jamming using a rooftop microphone. Quite tickled to see High Pitch Polytone is still around, and I've never heard of voice on The Pip - thank you! The Buzzer is still live as of October 2020. Chinese Robot sounds like a NewStar (Taiwan) jammer - I recognized the NewStar voice, albeit thrown in a blender. Thank you sir! Great fun!

I was diggin' that drums and trumpets sound.

Polytones (think) still exist because i found a similar sation that sounded like it

13:03 HOLY CRAP THE SONG WITH FIVE NAMES A.K.A. SOAPBOX TAO A.K.A. CHECKMATE ATHEISTS! A.K.A. NEOSPACE GOVERNMENT A.K.A. YOU CAN NEVER KNOW BY WILL WOOD CONFIRMED???REAL!1!!??!1!?

The Chinese robots and the Polytones freaked me out. More please! Also, Wop Wop was cool. I loved them all.

The Three note oddity has the same voice as the gong station when it didn’t have the drunk men singing